Alex Albon has discussed the struggles he experienced alongside Max Verstappen and how the Dutchman’s “unique” Formula 1 driving style made him a “bit tense”.
Verstappen utilised Red Bull’s crushing dominance with the all-conquering RB19 car to produce the greatest season in F1 history with a tally of 19 victories from 22 races.
The now three-time champion broke the record for the most consecutive wins with 10 in a row between Miami and Monza, while also surpassing the 1000 laps-led milestone.
However, by contrast, Red Bull team-mate Sergio Perez struggled throughout 2023, particularly in qualifying trim, and ended up a substantial 290 points behind Verstappen.
Last August, Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff labelled the disparity as “odd” and “bizarre” before then proceeding to suggest that Verstappen’s considerable intra-team advantage could be attributed towards his “ability to create a car around himself that is very tricky to control but fast if you can”.
Having branded those remarks as “bull****” at the time, Verstappen has clarified to Auto Motor und Sport that he simply adapts to Red Bull assembling the fastest car possible.
“I tune the car the way I like it,” he told the outlet. “And the other driver tunes it to suit him. The engineers develop the car to make it faster. And not how I would like it to be.
“It’s the same with the driving style. What is your driving style? I don’t know.
“I adapt to the needs of the car to make it the fastest. That’s the key to being a really good Formula 1 driver. Adapting to what you get from the team.”
Prior to Perez’s arrival, Albon had spent 18 months partnering Verstappen at Red Bull but was dropped at the end of 2020 after a challenging year with the Austrian outfit.
The Anglo-Thai driver, now at Williams, has rebuffed the notion that Red Bull tailors its cars exclusively towards Verstappen. Instead, he has cited how the 26-year-old’s tendency to favour an extremely sharp front end creates difficulty for his team-mates.
“A lot of people say that car is built around him, he’s kind of like the Michael Schumacher of Ferrari, he’s created this team around him,” he told the High Performance podcast.
“Truthfully, the car is what it is, he is very quick. He has quite a unique driving style, it’s not that easy to get along with.
“Everyone has a driving style. I would say my driving style is a bit more on the smooth side, but I like a car that has a good front-end, so quite sharp, quite direct.
“Max does too, but his level of sharp and direct is a whole different level. It’s eye-wateringly sharp.
“To give people an explanation of what that might feel like, if you bump up the sensitivity [on a computer game] completely to the max and you move that mouse and it’s just darting across the screen everywhere, that’s kind of how it feels.
“It becomes so sharp that it makes you a little bit tense.”
